Microsoft Adds Tilt To the Mouse Wheel

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Taking a cue from luxury car makers, Microsoft has just added a tilt capability to its venerable mouse scroll wheel. The ability to tilt from left to right, combined with rolling up and down, is designed to add additional movement capability to your pointer without moving the mouse at all.

Microsoft rolled out their Tilt Wheel Technology with a raft of press releases, mechanical drawings and other fluff. Oh, they also just started shipping the first mouse featuring the technology, the $55 Wireless IntelliMouse Explorer. Does it really work? Is this a mousing revolution, or a gimmick designed to sell expensive mice? We put the technology, and the new product, to the test to find out.

Tilt Wheel Technology gives users the ability to scroll side-to-side using what looks like the same old scroll wheel we’ve always used with Microsoft mice. As you can see in the diagram above, the mouse wheel has two separate axes of movement. The first axis allows you to roll the wheel  and scrolls windows and web pages up and down. But Microsoft has encased the wheel in a separate sheath, on its own pivot point, which lets you push the wheel from side to side. And that lets you scroll pages horizontally, including web pages, Word documents and Excel spreadsheets.

Here’s what it looks like in a real mouse.

As you can see in the picture above (you may need to click on it to see the large version of the photo), arrows are present on either side of the wheel pointing to the right and left. Pressing the wheel to the right will horizontally scroll the contents of your current window to the right, and vice versa for the left. It’s a fairly simple technology, and a very simple implementation. Good marks there for Microsoft.

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